Artichokes are honestly a weird plant. They are descended from fissles and they have a really

weird name, but they're really good. I mean I remember spinach artichoke dip, my brother in fact was

obsessed with spinach artichoke dip and anytime we went out to a restaurant that's the

only thing he would get and he would eat it in a bread bowl and we'd be like hey Brian don't you want

actual dinner and he's like no I'm fine I just need a spinach arachoke dip

speaking of let's figure out how to grow it artichokes are actually the unopened flower bud of the

artichoke plant. They have pointed leaves, those are called bracts, that wrap

around the artichoke heart and that that hard is the developing flower inside

of there.

And so you harvest it before it blooms.

Really cool plant.

And once you get it going, it's going to produce for you

multiple years in a row.

So the ones that we're going to be focusing on are called Globe Artichokes.

They are a subgroup of Sinara Cardunculus, which is a cartoon, which is also

an edible plant. So they are sort of related to the

cartoon which some of my friends in the gardening world really love to grow as

well so are artichokes perennials well yes you can grow them as annuals in colder zones because you kind of

have to but it's not ideal if you're going to grow in a colder, I would say you probably want to do it in a container because they don't produce optimally until their second year of life.

So you don't want a killing frost to come in and kill them before they become optimally productive.

They are fantastic in zones 7 to 10, but again, most

zones can be stretched. All right, let's think about planting. You want to plant early spring, if you're in a colder zone, late fall if you're in a

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